Farewell to the Flesh

By Edward Sklepowich

During Carnival, Urbino Macintyre discovers a murder in a convent

Each of the sisters of the Charity of Santa Crispina chooses a different way to die. Some relax into the arms of death, eager for their eternal rewards. Some leave this world violently, screaming in pain as they take their last breaths. The convent is a severe place, its rooms spartan, its food bland. But the time has come for Carnival in Venice, and a tourist will take any room he can find. Photographer Val Gibbon has come to document the renovation of a nearby church, but he has hardly begun his work before a knife finds its way into his chest, and the convent becomes a crime scene.
 
American expatriate Urbino Macintyre, a biographer and amateur sleuth, sets aside his plans for Carnival to look into the murder. In this ancient city, nothing is ever as it seems—especially not in the season when the only creature not wearing a mask is death itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Jan 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504001304

Edward Sklepowich

Edward Sklepowich is an American author of mysteries. Raised in Connecticut, he grew up living with his parents and his grandparents, who immersed him in Italian culture and Neapolitan dialect from a young age. A Fulbright scholarship took him to Europe and Africa, and he has made his home across the Mediterranean, living in Venice, Naples, Egypt, and Tunisia. Deeply connected to his Italian heritage, Sklepowich has used the country as the setting for all of his fiction. Sklepowich’s debut novel, Death in a Serene City (1990), introduced Urbino Macintyre, an American expatriate and amateur sleuth who undertakes to solve a Venetian murder. Sklepowich treats Venice as a character, using its ancient atmosphere to shape his classically structured mysteries. He has written eight more Mysteries of Venice—most recently, The Veils of Venice (2009).

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Prologue

DECEIT AT FLORIAN’S

Urbino Macintyre was amused as he sat in the café Florian listening to the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini. Here it was only a few days after the New Year and she was already pining for her summer villa up in Asolo.

"It’s the prospect of Carnevale that makes me want to wish my life away like this, she said. She leaned back on the maroon banquette in the Chinese salon and slowly shook her head. You’re still a bit too young to realize it but time lost can never be regained, despite what poor Proust in his cork-lined room thought."

A doleful look clouded her attractive face. The Contessa had never told Urbino her precise age but the stretch of her memory and the range of her experience, as well as her frequent references—sometimes playful, sometimes wistful—to what she called his youth, indicated someone at least two decades older. The wedding photograph in the salotto blu of the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini showed a patrician-featured English girl who hadn’t so much changed since her days at St. Brigid’s-by-the-Sea as gradually aged into the mature look already present in the otherwise fresh face.

She glanced out the window at the Piazza San Marco, relatively empty and quiet now after the recent festivities.

All those barbarians in masks descending on our serene city! It’s intolerable even to think of it!

She reached out for another tea cake, this one frosted with a deep-rose icing that matched the color of her dress.

And I can’t even go up to London for February. It would be cruel to abandon Josef even if he does insist on staying with the Sisters.

The Contessa was referring to the emigré Pole, Josef Lubonski, who was restoring a fresco at the Church of San Gabriele in the Cannaregio. She had secured him the position after she had seen the work he had done in London in her former parish church and in the townhouse of a friend. Instead of staying at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini as she had suggested, however, he preferred to lodge at the Casa Crispina, the pensione run by the Sisters of the Charity of Santa Crispina across from San Gabriele.

But what about abandoning me, Barbara? Doesn’t that give you pause?

"Are you ever anything but abandoned during Carnevale, caro?" she said with an arch little smile. And it seems that this year you’re determined to be even more shameless than ever.

When Urbino was about to defend himself, she languidly waved a beringed hand temporarily bereft of a petit four.

Please! I refuse to hear anything more about this masked ball you’re thinking of giving at the Palazzo Uccello.

Urbino smiled.

Oh, I’m not thinking about it anymore, Barbara.

Thank God for that. The good Sisters at St. Brigid’s were right, I see! Even the most inveterate sinner isn’t beyond redemption.

What I mean, Barbara, is that I don’t have to think about giving it anymore. I’ve decided to go ahead.

To go ahead? Her gray eyes were round with startle. He might have said that he was going to attempt a translation of Remembrance of Things Past into Serbo-Croatian. "But, caro, it will be chaos, simply chaos! She reached out to touch the sleeve of his tweed jacket. You don’t know the first thing about it!"

I agree.

She nodded with self-satisfaction and reached for another tea cake.

At least you know the limits of your own presumption.

Exactly. That’s why I’ve decided to ask Oriana to help me organize things. She’ll be my hostess.

The Contessa was holding the tea cake, this one iced in light green. She lost interest in it and put it back on the plate.

"But why Oriana, caro? I love her dearly but she isn’t the least preoccupied of women."

The Contessa was right. Oriana Borelli and her husband, Filippo, were usually in the thick of extramarital intrigues and domestic disputes that left them little time or energy for much else. Urbino had no idea if Oriana would be able to help him. In fact, he hadn’t even brought it up with her yet.

The Contessa took a sip of tea.

"Even if Oriana is a competent woman when she isn’t distracted by the opera buffa they like to make of their life, what could she hope to do with the Palazzo Uccello? It’s a lovely building, but if you’re giving a ball, caro, you’ll need space. The Palazzo Uccello is too intime. Oriana can’t work a miracle. She looked at him slyly over her teacup. Because you’re an attractive younger man, Oriana might be making promises she can’t fulfill. What plans have the two of you made?"

I wouldn’t exactly say we’ve made any plans yet, Barbara.

And why not? The storm that’s going to disturb this calm—she nodded out at the Piazza—"isn’t so far away. Some people start to think about the next Carnevale as soon as the old one is over. Plans should have been made long ago; surely even you can see that. She put her teacup down and paused before adding with quiet firmness, A great many things."

Such as? Urbino prompted.

A motif, for example! A theme! Do you have that?

Not really.

Not really! You need a theme, Urbino dear, I can’t believe that Oriana didn’t tell you!

Poor maligned Oriana, of course, could have told him nothing at all on the topic.

What would you suggest, Barbara?

"What would I suggest, caro? Whatever in the world have I to do with it? This is Oriana’s pet project, and I wish her—and you—the best of luck! You’ll both need it!"

All this is making me feel a bit dispirited, Urbino said, letting his voice drift into a resigned tone. "I hope you realize that I’d prefer you to help me but I know how you feel about Carnevale. Quite frankly, I was afraid of asking you."

‘Afraid!’ Am I a person to be afraid of? she said, shooting him a quick, baleful look. "Don’t be a cretino! I hate Carnevale, yes! But does that mean that I would be happy to see you make a fool of yourself—and of me?"

Of you? But what would you have to do with it?

Even if I have nothing to do with it—absolutely, positively nothing as you have so obviously decided all on your own!—I would be in the thick of it. It would reflect on me! We’re associated, we’re linked, we’re allied! Everyone knows that. Everyone can see it. She gestured around the Chinese salon at the other patrons, who seemed completely oblivious to the two of them enjoying their fabled rapport. If you make a gaffe—as surely you will if poor, well-intentioned Oriana is seeing to things—they’ll laugh at us both. I couldn’t bear that for you! she finished with a commiserative shake of her head and a look that was meant to be devoid of everything else but sympathy for him.

What would you suggest, then, Barbara? he asked again.

I don’t see any alternative, do you, Urbino? I feel like sweet, smiling Pope John Paul the First who had things thrust upon him, poor man. What choice did he have but to put his shoulder to the wheel? she said with more passion than appropriateness in her idiom. And we all know what happened to him!

Does all this mean that you’ll help me with my masked ball? he asked, trying to hide a smile.

It means nothing of the kind! If I had to provide something at the Palazzo Uccello at this late date, I would be doomed to abject failure! I’d be like Fortuny trying to make do with a pitiful little scrap of material, lovely though the Palazzo Uccello is. Neither of us would survive it. She paused. Oriana’s failure, however, would be even more abject than our own. That’s beyond dispute.

For a third time this early January afternoon Urbino asked for her suggestion.

Before answering she caught the attention of the waiter in his formal black and white and ordered a fresh pot of tea.

"I’d suggest, caro, that you forget all about having a masked ball at the Palazzo Uccello."

But—

I can see there’s no choice, she interrupted. "No choice whatsoever but for me to have one at the Ca’ da Capo. You force my hand. Settle things with Oriana. Tell her I’ve decided to have a ballo in maschera and you wouldn’t think of having one yourself. She’ll understand. She’ll probably even be relieved."

But, Barbara, I wouldn’t want you to go through all that trouble.

You call it trouble, Urbino. I call it a penance willingly embraced before Lent even raises its ashy head. But don’t forget what I’m doing it for. She gave him only a moment to consider before informing him, "I’m doing it for you, caro."

She reached across the marble table to pat his hand.

And this was how Urbino, who had never had any intention of giving a masked ball at the Palazzo Uccello, was able to persuade the Contessa to give one herself at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini. He knew that the Contessa, rather than being offended by his little deception, was just the kind of person to appreciate it. But he also knew that she would no more have admitted to this than admitted to having been aware, all along, of the deceit itself.

The Contessa’s appreciation, along with her awareness, shone almost mischievously from her gray eyes as she picked up yet another petit four and waited for her fresh pot of tea.

Part One

DEATH BEFORE LENT

1

Just the other night, only a few hours after Carnival officially began at midnight, one more aged sister died at the Convent of the Charity of Santa Crispina.

Surrounded by a group of equally ancient nuns, Sister Clara sat up straight in bed and said with a blind, unblinking gaze,

I see her clearly, so clearly, my dear ones. Her face is as young as ours when we took the veil. She smiled and opened her thin arms wide. Welcome, Sister Death.

Promptly, without any anticlimax, she fell back on the pillows and died.

The sisters started to do what had to be done. Two prepared to wash the body, two prayed, and two argued over whether the smile on Sister Clara’s face should be toned down a bit. And no doubt at least one of them was wondering who would be left behind to tend to her own temple of the Holy Ghost when her time came.

Even if you had no other evidence than the smooth, efficient way the sisters went about their business in Sister Clara’s cell, as if they were performing the ordinary tasks of housekeeping, you would nonetheless know that death was far from a stranger to this building that housed the convent and its attendant pensione.

Yet death, though familiar, wasn’t any more welcome here than elsewhere. It didn’t always come so benevolently or wear such a fresh face as it had for Sister Clara, who seemed happy to be delivered into the hands of her Heavenly Bridegroom.

Far from it. Dying sisters at Santa Crispina have been known to scream and even curse when they finally saw the face that death was wearing for them.

Such reluctance on the part of some sisters to leave their building for the bosom of Abraham might lead you to think it was a snug ark whose considerable comforts mocked the order’s vow of poverty. You would be wrong, however, as you would immediately have known when you saw the building’s leprous stones and chipped statuary, its damp-warped shutters and listing staircases, its buckling floors and crumbling plaster. The furniture was heavy, dark, and minimal, and the paintings scattered throughout the four stories were mainly grim memento mori and martyrdoms. Never did divine motherhood look as consumptive as it did in some of the Madonnas holding their beloved sons in their arms. As for the Last Supper and the Crucifixion that hung in the guests’ dining room, you would have been hard pressed to say which of the two was less appetizing.

And yet, despite the dismal quarters, there were several reasons why you might consider staying at the pensione run by the Sisters of the Charity of Santa Crispina.

For one thing, you might be zealously inclined to purify your spirit in the Casa Crispina’s austere surroundings, reminiscent of some dark medieval inn where you were frozen in winter and baked in summer. The good sisters saw no need to make you any more comfortable than they were themselves, the charity of their ancient order obliging them not to deny you any of the pleasures to be gained from the mortification of the flesh.

The Casa Crispina provided a clean, sparsely furnished room, three plain meals a day, and the sound of bells from matins all the way through vespers to compline. You were free to ignore these summonses as you wished but the sisters believed that even the mere sound, falling on your ear in sleep or in sloth, had some beneficial effect. To make things as easy as possible, they had placed a prie-dieu and inspirational lithograph in each of the ten rooms so that you could not invoke the excuse of the inconvenience of a long walk to the chapel.

Another, much more obvious reason why you might be attracted to the Casa Crispina was purely a matter of lire since it was one of the cheapest places to stay in all of Venice—unless, that is, you reckoned in the cost of throat and chest medications in winter and all those aranciate and ices you were likely to consume in summer.

If these considerations of austerity and cost did not sway you, however, perhaps the retiring nature of the Casa Crispina could, for it was in a remote part of the Cannaregio into which tourists only occasionally strayed from the Ghetto or the Church of the Madonna dell’Orto, the parish church of Tintoretto. Thus you might indulge here the fantasy that almost every tourist has—that he is anything but what he is.

The shopkeeper, the children playing by the covered wellhead, the mask maker arranging his display, the two old women in black shaking their heads over the death notice on the bakery-shop window—you could convince yourself that all these residents of the quarter that you saw in only the first few moments of leaving the Casa Crispina couldn’t possibly know you for what you really were.

It was much harder to maintain the fiction of your true identity, however, within the somber walls of the Casa Crispina itself where the sisters’ domain was clearly separate from that of their guests. You might conceal other things but never that you were anything more than a mere guest, someone initiated into less arcane mysteries than those the good sisters shared.

The pensione, except for its dining area, was confined to the story above the ground level, while the nuns were semicloistered on the next two floors. The two groups mingled only in the chapel and the reception area—both on the ground floor—and on the front staircase that connected all four floors. The sisters, however, usually used their own private entrance and staircase.

The refectory at the rear of the ground floor was divided by a flimsy partition with a door. Large stained-glass windows, which looked out on a narrow canal, were usually shuttered. The guests were served in their own area not by the sisters themselves but by two middle-aged women from nearby Mestre who wore perpetually disgruntled expressions.

As Dora Spaak sat down at the empty table in her usual place, she glanced as she always did at the partly opened door into the sisters’ refectory. Although the sisters ate earlier, Dora occasionally thought she could see the flutter of dark-gray cloth through the opening. One time when she had come to the dining room earlier than usual, she had heard a voice droning something indistinguishable. A prayer? a homily? the life of a martyred saint? There had been no way for her to tell but it had given her an uneasy feeling.

No, Dora didn’t feel at all comfortable staying at the Casa Crispina. She hated it when some of the sisters referred to it by its old-fashioned name, the Hospice, because even though she knew this was supposed to evoke memories of the religious lodgings for the weary in the Holy Land of long ago, all a nurse like her could think of was pain and the end of life.

So much seemed peculiar here. For example, even though it would have been easier for the women from Mestre to bring the food directly from the kitchen to the guests’ dining room through the nuns’ refectory, they instead made circuitous trips down a corridor even though the nuns had long finished dinner.

As Dora was trying to figure out once again why the door between the two areas was always partly open if no one went through it during meals—was it to tease them all with fleeting glimpses of a better life or to allow the sisters to keep an eye on their guests?—she heard someone approaching. It could be her brother, Nicholas. He had been seeing to their mother in her room, making sure that she really didn’t want to come out to dinner, that she didn’t want to be coaxed into joining them. Nicholas had more patience with their mother than she did. Dora was already dreading returning to Pittsburgh alone with her.

When she looked away from the door, it wasn’t Nicholas standing there but the handsome photographer who had been so nice to her since she arrived.

Thinking of joining the sisters? They could use some young blood.

He had a soothing, well-modulated voice, one she could have listened to for hours. It was the kind of voice she associated with the best bred of Englishmen.

Dora felt herself blushing. She looked down at her napkin, stained from the meals of previous days.

You should be careful. The sisters might hear you, Mr. Gibbon.

Just Val, remember?

Val—that’s short for…?

He gave her a dazzling smile. His eyes were as dark as any Italian’s but his skin was whiter than hers.

Guess.

I couldn’t—unless—

Yes?

Could it be Valentine?

His quick laugh made her feel foolish. She dared not look up right away but busied herself with her napkin. When she felt strong enough to encounter his dark eyes again, however, she saw that they were no longer alone. Xenia Campi, the Italian woman who lived at the pensione and claimed to be able to see into the future, was standing next to Val, a frown on her heavily made-up face.

Excuse me, sir. Stout, black-haired, and in her mid-forties, the Italian woman spoke deliberately in heavily accented English. She put her hand on the top of the chair behind which Val Gibbon was standing. "This is my seat."

"Excuse me, signora! Everything in order here in the convent. What would happen if it wasn’t, even during Carnival—or should I say especially during Carnival!"

Val Gibbon moved aside so that the woman, wearing a plum-colored, robelike dress with voluminous sleeves, could take her accustomed place next to Dora. Before he went to the other side of the table, the photographer bent down close to Dora’s ear and whispered, Nothing as romantic as that, I’m afraid, but thank you for thinking so. It shows you have a tender imagination.

He went to sit down near the end of the table, his back to the partly open door. As he unfolded his napkin, he looked over at Dora.

"A very tender imagination," he added with a smile.

Dora looked away. She had been surprised to see Val Gibbon in the dining room tonight, not because he had come upon her unawares and seemed to enjoy doing it, but because he hadn’t eaten at the Casa Crispina for several nights in a row now. She had missed him. No matter what the others might say, she could tell he was in every sense a gentleman. He was like one of those Englishmen who always ended up being especially nice to poor young girls in the books she used to read. They might have seemed strange and even gruff at first, hiding some disturbing secret, but they always made up for it before the end of the story.

On the second evening of Val Gibbon’s absence, Xenia Campi had said, I don’t foresee good things for a man who has money to throw away like that.

Whether this was an opinion or the fruit of the woman’s supposedly clairvoyant vision, Dora didn’t know and didn’t want to know. Dora was in almost constant fear that the woman would say something about her future. It wasn’t that she believed that Xenia Campi—or anyone—could see into the future, but she was superstitious. She was sure that the ill the woman might claim to see would come true, just because she had dared utter it. As for the good she might predict, that was sure to fly away as quickly as the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square whenever there was any sudden sound.

Tonight Xenia Campi looked particularly humorless and depressed, and had an unnatural restraint that made Dora feel as if she might strike out at any moment at her or the photographer with some dire prediction or scathing indictment. Dora was relieved when Nicholas, without their mother, took his seat on her other side.

He was soon followed, noisily, by the three teenage boys from Naples. Xenia Campi darted a quick glance at one of the boys, who avoided looking at her and started to talk nervously to his companions. The three boys usually kept very much to themselves, not saying more than a few words of greeting during their meals and never staying longer than was necessary. They were here for Carnival and obviously didn’t want to spend any time away from more exciting things in the big square.

And how are you feeling this evening, Signora Campi? Nicholas asked.

Much better, thank you. My cold is almost gone.

Mr. Lubonski isn’t as fortunate, I’m afraid.

The Pole who was restoring the fresco in the nearby church was confined to his room with the flu.

Signor Lubonski’s condition is much more serious than mine, I assure you.

Xenia Campi said this as if, from the privileged position of someone born with a caul, she saw things about the man’s lungs that even an X ray couldn’t.

Nicholas turned somewhat hesitantly to Val Gibbon. Dora had noticed that her brother was frequently self-conscious with Gibbon and would hardly look him in the face when he spoke to him. She attributed this to his characteristic shyness around very outgoing people. It didn’t mean he didn’t like them. In fact, she had always thought it was very much the opposite.

As her brother addressed Val Gibbon now, Dora was pleased to note the almost boyish enthusiasm behind his words.

You must be finding plenty of things to photograph in Venice during Carnival, Mr. Gibbon. It must be difficult to know what not to take a picture of when there’s so much to choose from.

Gibbon smiled at him.

Not at all, Mr. Spaak. That’s the difference between an amateur and a professional. Photography is one of the arts, you know. Like all artists, the true photographer is an initiate in mysteries unknown to others.

Xenia Campi, with no attempt to hold her voice down, said to Dora, There’s no more art in taking a picture than there is in making a ragout!

Dora hoped Val Gibbon didn’t think ill of her for being the recipient of the remark. She would have frowned at the woman except for her fear that it might draw even more notice—or that the woman would turn her ill will on her. Her heart went out to the photographer. He might be good at pretending to be strong, but she sensed that he was almost as vulnerable as she was to an unkind word.

Ah, but Signora Campi, Gibbon said as he turned to the woman, surely you know that there are cooks and there are chefs, there are holiday picture takers and there are photographers—just as surely as there are Luna Park frauds and whatever might be the opposite in your own profession. You see that I am kind enough to call it a profession.

Xenia Campi’s eyes widened but she said nothing. One of the boys at the far end of the table started to laugh loudly and was soon joined by the other two. They began to sing a song in Italian. Dora couldn’t understand the song but Xenia Campi frowned in their direction, and the boy she had glanced at earlier stopped singing.

Poor Val Gibbon held his head high but Dora could see his bruised heart. It was just as exposed for her as was the Flaming Heart of Jesus that graced the wall of her room upstairs.

The serving woman came in from the corridor with a tureen of steaming soup. Dora sighed. Another meal at the Casa Crispina was about to begin.

2

Urbino looked down from the window of the Palazzo Uccello straight into the eyes of Death.

Only a few moments earlier, Urbino had put aside the volume of Remembrance of Things Past and gone to the window. Someone is in the calle, he had said to himself, even though he had heard nothing.

He had been right. The Palazzo Uccello had been visited on this February evening by Death and the Lady of Veils.

Death was tall, dressed almost all in black. Black boots, black leggings and gloves, a black steeple of a hat pulled down over a mad jumble of black crepe Medusa locks. The eyelets of the white oval mask were trimmed in black. Hundreds of featherlike ebony scraps had been sewn together to form a cape that its wearer hugged close.

The Lady of Veils was a vision in white. In fact, with her cascade of short veils framing a delicate mask, her gauze robe, gloves, feathered fan, and slippers—all ghostly white—she seemed to be an emanation of the fog that was curling over the bridge from the canal and drifting into the alley.

Death, conscious of his audience, extended his arms, and suddenly became a burst of color, exposing long tatters of crimson, indigo, yellow, jade, and pink cloth sewn to the torso of the garment beneath. It was like seeing someone eviscerated. The beauty was perversely enhanced for Urbino by the horror of the association.

The Lady of Veils moved closer to Death and let herself be enclosed in the blossom of his embrace.

Was the Lady a woman and Death a man? There was no way of knowing. They carried their secret away with them as they broke their embrace and seemed to glide over the humpbacked bridge. The calle was empty once again of everything except the drifting, curling fog.

Serena, the cat he had rescued from the Public Gardens, jumped up on the sill to get Urbino’s attention. He turned back into the room and took Schumann’s Carnaval from the shelf. The Contessa had given him the recording to help him through his recuperation from a bout of the flu that had kept him housebound for almost a week.

"It should more than make up for whatever of Carnevale you think you’re missing, caro." She had sighed and shaken her well-coiffed head. Why can’t our celebration be sane and romantic like Schumann’s?

But it wouldn’t be the Venetian Carnival then, would it? He did not remind her of the sad suicidal end that Schumann had come to. I wish it were two months long the way it used to be, he said playfully. Just imagine if it began the day after Christmas!

Even after ten years, you’re as much of a perplexity as when I first met you! I thought you cherished your solitude, that you had come here to Venice to be away from it all. Isn’t it enough that you’re forcing me to give this costume ball? she said with little regard for how she had actually arrived at this decision a month ago. "Oh, yes, caro, you’re a perplexity to me—a dear, sweet one but a perplexity nonetheless."

Am I so different from you? You enjoy your solitude, too, and yet you negotiate drawing rooms like a goldfish in a crystal bowl. You’re in your element then.

Of course I am! she had said, visibly pleased with his image. "But with you the two are horrible extremes. You could use some order and balance. Listen to Carnaval."

That’s just what he would do now. He put the record in the player and sat on the sofa. The soothing notes of the Préambule filled the room, followed by the movements of Pierrot and Harlequin, those two commedia dell’arte figures of the spirit and the flesh. Naïve Pierrot and coarse Harlequin. Now there were two extremes, Urbino thought as he pictured the figures against his closed eyelids. Could the spirit of the one inhabit the flesh of the other? He would have to pose this riddle to the Contessa.

Two screams from the calle interrupted the Valse noble and Urbino went to the window again. The alley and the bridge seemed deserted. He was about to turn away when a form detached itself from the shadows near the bridge and crept along the calle past the Palazzo Uccello. Whether a man or a woman he couldn’t tell any more than with Death and the Lady of Veils a little while ago.

The form was swathed in long dark robes, its face covered with an equally dark hood. When it neared the opening of a courtyard, a second form bounded from the shadows and, with another of the screams that had caught his attention, ran down the calle and beyond Urbino’s sight. The first figure quickened its pace in pursuit as a cry floated back and up to the closed window.

What had he seen? A playful game of hide and seek? One person pursuing another with evil intent? An argument between friends that might end with them kissing each other?

The appearances could cover any of these realities.

Urbino went back to the sofa. The fifth movement had begun. Reaching out to stroke the cat, Urbino smiled to himself.

If Barbara could only see me now, he thought. This was almost as good as a cork-lined room, and he was more than content—at least for the time being.

3

Schumann’s Carnaval ended. Urbino poured himself another glass of Corvo and picked up the Proust, opening it to where a postcard reproduction of Man Ray’s photograph of Proust’s death profile marked his place.

He had read Remembrance of Things Past several times before but he was reading it now